Mentoring Moment:: Who's Learning The Most?

Last night, when David and I went to pick up my mentee (whom I will call Eliana for this post-not her real name), there were cop cars right next door and the cops were running through the yards after a suspect. According to my mentee's mom, right before we arrived the suspect ran through the yard - with the kids playing outside - with a gun.

We picked up Eliana so that I could work with her on her math and we could hang out. She hadn't eaten yet so we had a dinner of tortellini, sauce, bread and butter and veggies. She ate 2 helpings of everything! It was as though she hadn't eaten all day and for all I know, maybe she hadn't. I think that what I will do from now on is to get a backpack and send her home with a a backpack of food that can be shared amongst the kids. I can't stand the idea of them being hungry.

So we worked on her math, with the lessons being punctuated by banging the drum the number of times for the set of five that we were multiplying. For example: 3x5=hitting the drum 3 times and so forth. I think she got it. We'll see when I see her tomorrow and review again.

When we took her home, that was a little odd. We were about 10 minutes early and mom was nowhere to be found. Eliana's siblings said she left for a little bit and they thought that she went to the grocery store. None of the kids knew how to unlock the door and said that mom told them not to open the door even for someone they know. That knocked David for a bit of a loop. So we waited in the car for mom's return and let her go. David said, "The whole family dynamic and walking into a potentially dangerous situation was very odd." I told him that I knew when I began mentoring kids who have incarcerated parents or who are very high risk, that I would have some interesting (uncomfortable) experiences. The important thing is to remember that we don't know everything: we don't know what her dad is in jail for, we don't (yet) know what the food situation in the house is though I suspect that a single, unemployed mom w/ 5 kids struggles, and we can't judge because we don't know the full story. All we can do is to try and help. All but one of the children has a mentor (he's on a waiting list), so I don't want to step on a lot of toes.

I expect to grow and learn a lot through this experience and it will inform my decisions about CASA (court appointed special advocacy), family law and the juvenile justice system. These experience will guide those decisions.